NEW YORK — His girlfriend told him not to buy the electric scooter.

But Alfonso Villa Muñoz was intrigued. He was working in a Brooklyn bodega last August when a delivery man said he knew someone selling one for $700. Muñoz said yes.

The scooter was cherry red with the number 7 on the front. Under the seat was an extra-large lithium ion battery. When it needed charging, Muñoz would remove the battery from the scooter and use both hands to lug it up to the couple’s third-floor apartment in College Point, Queens.

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A month later, the battery exploded in the living room, unleashing flames that engulfed the apartment. Muñoz screamed for their 8-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who was asleep. He could not breach the wall of black smoke to get to her. Stephanie died from smoke inhalation.

“It’s like you bring in death and destruction to your house, and not only to you, to everybody around you,” said Muñoz, 36, pulling off his glasses to wipe away tears. “You could lose everything.”

E-bikes and e-scooters have flooded New York City’s streets in recent years, embraced by delivery workers and commuters as an economical and efficient new way to get around. But even as the devices have become nearly ubiquitous, the batteries inside them have made New York City an epicenter for a new kind of ferocious and fast-moving fire.

These fires are “uniquely dangerous,” warned Laura Kavanagh, the city’s fire commissioner. With little or no warning, the batteries can ignite, leaving seconds for people to escape. In just three years, lithium battery fires have tied electrical fires and have surpassed blazes started by cooking and smoking for major causes of fatal fires in the city.

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Across the country, over 200 micro-mobility fire or overheating incidents have been reported from 39 states, resulting in at least 19 fatalities, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. But the organization emphasized that the problem is particularly acute in densely populated areas like New York City. In London, lithium battery fires are the fastest-growing fire risk, with 57 e-bike fires and 13 e-scooter fires this year, according to the London Fire Brigade.

In New York, lithium battery fires have killed 13 people this year, including four people in a blaze that started in an e-bike store in Chinatown on Tuesday. A total of 23 people have died in battery fires since 2021. This year, there have been 108 fires, compared with 98 fires for the same period last year.